video games

Part of a Series? Nope! Play away! It helps if you’ve played other Final Fantasy games, but it’s not necessary at all!

Brief Synopsis:

With charming, stylized visuals for both the young and the young at heart, players will collect, raise and battle iconic monsters by stacking them to form adorable yet strategic monster towers. Two siblings journey to a mysterious land to rediscover their lost memories. In this peculiar place where stacking things on one’s head is perfectly normal, the young monster tamers will encounter new friends and familiar Final Fantasy heroes as they learn the truth about their pasts.

Commentary:

This game is SUPER FUN! Like I mean really ultra super duper ridiculously fun (and addictive)! It’s kind of a weird mix of Pokemon and Final Fantasy rolled into one. There’s no actual pokemon or anything in it, but it has similar elements, definitely. They both have the thing where you need to gather up little creatures for your party and use them to help you win battles, level them up, love them, squeeze them and call them George.

And did I mention puns? SO MANY PUNS. IT’S AMAZING. (Or your worst nightmare, you do you.) The dialogue is witty, silly and keeps the game moving. The plot moves at a pretty speedy pace, but not so much that it’s overwhelming. There are plenty of side quests to keep you busy as well if you don’t want the story to go by so fast.

The art style is also ridiculously cute. It’s a fun, lighthearted game for those who just want something to play in between srs biz games like Nier Automata (that game will break your heart and brain).

It has an adventure log too that’s easily accessed so if you take a long break from it, you won’t be lost. That has happened to me waaaaaaay too many times. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, DARK CLOUD 2. WHY DO I ALWAYS TAKE A BREAK AT THE SAME SPOT? I GOTTA STOP DOING THAT. Anyways.

World of Final Fantasy is a great game for lovers of the series or newcomers. It’s a friendly, upbeat romp. Check it out today!___

Dragonvale is a simulation game app for iOS and Android devices. Annnnd… (imho) it’s pretty rad. You can download it for free from your App Store of choice. (There are Special Items for sale through in-app purchase, but they’re totally not necessary to play the game and have fun!)

Here’s the premise: you have a dragon park. People come to visit it. They give you dragon-cash that you can use to improve and decorate your park, thus drawing more visitors and dragon-cash. Gain levels. Get bonuses. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But, the Dragons though!

You start off with a single dragon. But you can breed this dragon with others to create literally hundreds of different kinds of dragons. You may have heard of The Four Elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. In Dragonvale, there are dragons that correspond to these elements plus Light, Darkness, Lightning, Cold, and Galaxy, among others. You send two dragons to the Breeding Cave. They disappear for a period of time (rarer dragon eggs take longer to breed) and, when they are done, you have a dragon egg! It will go into your hatchery to incubate (again, rare dragons take more time) and they you have BABY DRAGONS! Feed your dragons to make them bigger and stronger, attract more dragon-cash, and have better odds in the breeding cave.

What I Like about Dragonvale

Various aspects of the game remind me of other games that I’ve enjoyed (like Flight Rising, Neko Atsume, Doodle God, and Meow Meow Star Acres) and blends them seamlessly. I like the “gotta catch ‘em all” part of the game, but I LOVE the puzzle aspect – trying to figure out which dragons to combine to create new dragons. You can find friends via Facebook or email invites and then share gems with them, borrow their dragons for breeding, and visit their parks! Also, for a small-screen game, the graphics are pretty good (dragons = adorbs!) and they update with new dragons, new special events, and new decor pretty regularly!

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD is the newest addition to our collection!

Well, you do now!!

The games we have available to play for the Wii U are:

DONKEY KONG COUNTRY: TROPICAL FREEZE

HYRULE WARRIORS

JUST DANCE 2016

LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS

LEGO MARVEL’S AVENGERS

MARIO PARTY 10

NEW SUPER MARIO BROS U

NEW SUPER LUIGI U

SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD

SUPER SMASH BROS

XENOBLADE CHRONICLES X

To view the days it’s available to play, visit the following link! Look for the events titled: Vortex Open Game Play or Teen Gaming Club. Open Game Play requires either a library card OR school ID while Teen Gaming Club only accepts a Fountaindale Library card. Don’t leave home without those!

Guess who turns 35 this year! It’s everyone’s favorite pizza-loving, mushroom-chasing, goomba-smashing, plumber! That’s right! Mario first appeared in the Donkey Kong video game in 1981 – making him old enough to be your dad! (And don’t forget about Uncle Luigi!)

In honor of this milestone, we will be celebrating this pixelated hero and all things Mario on Thursday, March 10, 2016 from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. You can make your own mustache and question cube, play on the Wii and Wii U consoles, eat some snacks, and wander around in the sewers collecting coins! (Maybe not that last bit.)

Now, I realize that most of you are familiar with this Mario:

But I grew up with this Mario:

To give you an idea of how much Mario has evolved in his 35 years,here’s a link* to an online flash version of the original 8-bit Nintendo game:

Part of a Series?
Yes and No. While you do not need to play any of the other Legend of Zelda games to have an understanding of Majora’s Mask, I highly recommend Ocarina of Time for the 3DS as well!

Brief Synopsis:“Play as Link and race against time to collect masks and transform into other characters, all to prevent Skull Kid from destroying the world of Termina in three days’ time.”

Commentary:

This commentary will be a bit different than other posts I’ve written as I’ve not beaten it yet! As of writing this, I’ve only had time to play approximately 20 minutes!

After checking this game out twice, I’ve finally started playing it! I’m pretty excited because I love Zelda games and I’ve heard nothing but good things about Majora’s Mask.

So, first impressions!

Pretty fun! Art style is the same as Ocarina of Time, so those of you who’ve played it before, will feel right at home. The prologue is pretty simple, introduces you to basic plot of what’s happening in the game and to the controls (if you’ve never played before). I happily breezed right through it!

Only part of the prologue I’ll touch on is this:

The mask merchant really gives me the creeps. Like seriously, in the official artwork dude has a Mario mask. Did he kill Mario and steal his face? Or is he an awesome artist? OR BOTH????

K, DUDE. I’LL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. JUST LEAVE ME ALONE D:

Then you get to the first part of the game. More specifically: The First Three Days. So. Things are… timed in Majora’s Mask. Timed anything in games gives me anxiety, even if it’s so much time that even Oprah can’t give it all away, I still freak out. I close the 3DS. Panic time. TO THE INTERNET.

Okay. Apparently even though you get a 72 hour (72 hours in game, in real life, it’s about 2-3 hours) time span, it’s not so bad. I found some websites that explain the concept and calmed me down. MAYBE I CAN DO THIS GUYS. I dunno, I’m kinda scared. But I think I can do it, I’m willing to give it a shot because I love the Legend of Zelda games.

The article I found with tips on managing your time can be found here. IGN also has a super helpful walkthrough if you’re like me and hate struggling to figure things out and just want to enjoy the game darnit.
_
Ashe

Can’t get enough of Marvel Superhero movies? Sick of waiting for the next one to come out? Already voted this week in our Superheroes Vs Villains Showdown? Guess what! There is a free PC game available called Marvel Heroes 2015.

It is available for download with or without Steam.

What is Steam?

Steam is a video game storefront client available on Windows, Mac and Linux; you buy and download the games through Steam. What’s nice about all this is that the games you purchase for your computer are all in one place! Never purchase a game twice because you can’t remember if you’ve bought it already or not (I’ve been there, it’s not fun)! They will all be there in your game library.

Don’t want to download Steam? That’s okay! Here is a link to download and play the game without steam.

To play Marvel Heroes 2015, download Steam on your home computer. (Sorry to any Linux users out there though, Marvel Heroes is only available on Mac and Windows)

Image: Steam

To begin playing, you will have to create an account with Marvel Heroes. You can do so here.

Now for the big question:

Why should you play this?

It’s a great way to immerse yourself in the Marvel Universe. You get to play as a Hero and defeat the bad guys! Hydra and many other Marvel Baddies are still out there and they must be stopped! While they have a very wide variety of who you can play as, in the beginning there are only a few you can choose from. They are:

Captain America

Black Panther

Punisher

Black Widow

Luke Cage

Human Torch

Colossus

Cyclops

Storm

Hawkeye

Rocket Racoon

DareDevil

You can play any of these heroes for free up until level 10.

There are three ways to unlock heroes:

Upon reaching level 10, you will get a special key that lets you unlock any hero you so desire (even ones that aren’t on the above this list!).

On your second login after 24 hours of your first login, you get a login reward of enough game money, eternity shards (ES), to buy one hero (or maybe even two if you go for the 200 ES heroes).

Play the game and as you defeat enemies, they will drop ES. You also sometimes get more ES as login rewards but it will never be as much as your second reward.

For a full list of characters you can choose from to play as click here.

To help you decide who to choose to play as go Marvelbase.com. This site lets you see all the possible abilities each character has.

I’m stuck! I’ve looked at all the abilities and I’m having decision anxiety!! What do??

Well, until after you hit level 10, you can play as any of the starter heroes. Play around with them, see whose abilities you like more. Who’s more fun to defeat baddies with?

What? You want a character that’s not on the starter list?

Even though I can’t make the decision for you, I can give a little advice. Whenever I get stuck on picking someone to play as, I tend to choose the character I have the biggest emotional attachment to. I’m the type of person that even if they have the CRAZIEST MOST OVERPOWERED SUPER DUPER ABILITIES EVARR, if I didn’t like the character, it wouldn’t be very fun. I have to like the character (I chose Winter Soldier for those wondering btw).

So look over that list one more time. Who’s your favorite? What Marvel character can you absolutely not live without? There’s your character. Pick them. When in doubt, let your heart decide.
__
Ashe

Part of a Series? YesBravely Second: End Layer (release date yet to be announced)

Brief Synopsis: “Explore Luxendarc as Tiz and other memorable characters on a visually stunning quest to restore balance to the world.” (Gamestop)

Other Neat Info:

The Nintendo Store on the 3DS has a free demo for those interested! I highly recommend playing it because if you complete the demo (which is more of a chance to explore the battle system than the actual in-game story), you get some extra items when you start up the actual game file!

Spoiler-free Commentary:

After that lackluster description from the publisher, I bet you’re wondering why you should play it.

LET ME TELL YOU.

The Story

The oceans are rotting. Volcanoes are erupting. The wind is no longer blowing. Do you have what it takes to save your world? If not, too bad! Screw your courage to the sticking place and team up to save the world from seemingly inevitable destruction. That’s as much about the story as I’m willing to tell you for fear of revealing any spoilers.

Gameplay

While the story is extremely captivating (and not to mention hilarious), the gameplay is the biggest draw. I can go on and on about how wonderful the gameplay is in this game. Bravely Default does a lot of things that are hard to find in JRPGs.

I’m not going to go into every awesome feature because that would just be tedious on both our ends but there are three that are especially awesome.

Say Goodbye to Random Battles Ruining Your Life

The most important feature is you can turn random battles off. Yes, you heard me correctly. I’ll say it one more time for those whose brains just broke: you can turn random battles off. This fact alone makes this game one of my favorite JRPGs. No more taking half a step in a dungeon and getting into fifty bajillion encounters you didn’t want to deal with. If you feel confident enough in your character’s levels and you want to grab all the treasure in a dungeon before fighting the boss, you can turn off random battles and goodbye frustration!

The random encounters setting in the config menu (that you can change at any time) is a slider you can set between 0% and 200%. 0% being no encounters and 200% being double the amount you normally find while exploring.

No More Tedious Level Grinds

My other favorite feature is that when you press the “Y” button, it will have your characters complete the last move you previously selected for each one. This lets you automate your battles! Turn encounters up to 200%, and you got yourself a match made in heaven for leveling! (Tip: make sure you’re in an area where your characters will not get decimated, otherwise I don’t recommend completely automating everything. In too high level of areas, that can result in a game over! Another option is to have at least one character heal while the others attack.)

Bravely Default Rewards You and Your Friends for Having Nothing Else to Do

Last, but not least, Bravely has a great linking “friend-to-party member” mechanic. If you have a friend who plays this game, make sure you add each other’s friend codes to your systems! If the game recognizes that you both play the game, you can link your friend to any one member of your party and any abilities your friend learned, you will now know for that linked character! You can only link one character per friend at a time, so choose wisely and convince all your friends to play! It doesn’t hurt you to not link your characters (it is entirely optional) it is just extremely helpful for when learning abilities early on in the game. You can also summon your friends in battle once per day if you’re getting a bit stuck! By the power of friendship, you will save the world!

With those three features, Bravely Default easily soars near to the top of my favorite game list. It makes exploring the game’s overworld extremely fun and enjoyable rather than a chore, which is the exact opposite reason of why you’d be playing a game!

The Big Question: Where can I find it in the library?

This will be on the second floor to the left of the media reference desk with the 3DS & DS games

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